Here’s another daily meditation from my recent book of devotions ‘Sunrise Sunset’ (HarperCollins/Harper San Francisco). Feel free to use/adapt it. These appear regularly on our mail-list.

Shalom!
Rowland Croucher (‘servus servorum dei’; AMDG)

Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread… Psalm 1:1.

Just about everybody wants to be happy. You dream of happiness, you plan for it, and perhaps pay any price to achieve it. Searching for happiness, one person will try to make a lot of money; others give all their money away. In the same search one woman will have five or six children; another enters a convent. Ask the average person what he or she wants out of life, and the chances are they’ll reply without hesitation, ‘I just want to be happy’.

Occasionally you meet someone who enjoys being miserable – and who gets a perverse delight in making others unhappy. Woody Allen apparently wasn’t joking when he said: ‘If my film makes one more person feel miserable, I’ll have done my job!’

Help me to distinguish, Lord, between what is passing away and what is eternal. Amen.